What makes a $20,000 cd player cost 20,000?

Hi,
Listened to a Linn Sondeck CD12 (sp?) a few years back and the thing amazed me.
Was expecting that digital player development would continue to progress and that this level of performance would become available in the 2-5,000 range. It appears to me that redbook cd player development has stagnated, so I wanted to run a couple questions by for a sanity check.
1. Is there anything in the design or manufacture of top notch cd players that neccessarily results in stratospheric production costs?
2. Has anything come out in the last two or three years that really struck you as raising the bar in the price to performace ratio?
Happy listening.